CEOs still buy into business case for sustainability, despite Trump's climate rollbacks

Good morning. Here’s a secret: Most CEOs believe climate change is real. They need to deal with it to stay profitable, create resilient operations, and remain relevant to their customers and employees. Texas leads the country in the production of both fossil fuels and renewable energy, in part because everyone knows the state’s power grid needs all the help it can get. Every time there’s a development that could reverse corporate action on climate change, from the Supreme Court’s 2024 reversal of the Chevron doctrine to the U.S. Department of Energy’s stunning report last year that downplayed global warming, I check in with leaders to see if they’re changing their strategy. The answer is they’re not.

That fact was reinforced yesterday when I called around for reaction to the Trump administration’s termination of the 2009 “endangerment” finding that gives the Environmental Protection Agency a legal duty to regulate six greenhouse gases that threaten human health. “This is a pattern we’ve seen swing back and forth in Washington,” one manufacturing leader told me. “We can’t plan around election cycles.”

This person and others did express concern that a Supreme Court challenge could permanently damage the EPA, creating an uneven playing field while reducing incentives to curb greenhouse gases at a critical time for the planet. Energy reporter Jordan Blum noted that it could extend the lives of existing coal plants but also found the overall impact on business is likely to be limited. What’s different is that, in this political climate, a lot of leaders don’t want to talk on the record about what they’re doing.

So let’s hear from Saleh ElHattab, the CEO of Gravity Climate, a software platform that helps companies measure, report, and reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions while cutting energy costs. Business is booming for reasons other than regulation. “Industrial buyers have the most razor-thin margins in the world,” he told me yesterday. “If you have an HVAC system that can be optimized, or we’ve detected some antiquated assets or opportunities for financing to get something that’s 90% more energy efficient, that’s good for business.”

A growing number of states and local governments also regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. But a lot of the action is also coming from the private sector. Large players like Apple, Walmart and Amazon have taken the lead in pushing vendors to disclose their own carbon footprints, which has created self-reinforcing ecosystems that aren’t about to unwind. Companies also routinely disclose their carbon emissions because of investor pressure, consumer demand and initiatives like the Carbon Disclosure Project.

And now there’s AI. While there’s legitimate concern about the energy needs and impact of data centers, AI can also be a catalyst in reducing pollutants. I recently spoke with Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas, whose platform helps customers run their fleets, factories and other physical operations more sustainably by connecting hardware in the field to the cloud. “Many execs don’t know what’s possible,” Biswas told me, noting that digitized operations mean even small changes can cascade to make a significant dent in emissions, safety and the bottom line. “It’s becoming table stakes.”

Amid the blows to science and regulation—and there have been many—the business case for sustainability remains strong.

CEO Daily is off on Monday for Presidents Day. We’ll be back in your inboxes on Tuesday.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]

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